


Life's Little Snippets

by Zavoj



Category: Original Work
Genre: Angst, F/F, F/M, Fantasy, Fluff, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-03-07
Updated: 2017-03-07
Packaged: 2018-09-30 07:26:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,348
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10157405
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zavoj/pseuds/Zavoj
Summary: Life isn't always fair; it's full of ups and downs and surprises. Some surprises reduce you to tears of joy. Other surprises just reduce you to tears.Reader/Original Characters.One-Shot Booklet.Response to Blind Inspiration Challenge on Lunaescence.





	1. False Pretenses

**Author's Note:**

> I wanted to use this opportunity to play with different styles & details of writing. Things not seen often in written works.

**_Prompt #1:_ ** _You caught me under false pretenses. How long before you let me go?_

 

         You couldn't believe what you were seeing. There was no way that they were sitting there with a needle in their arm. After all the time they'd spent helping you get clean… Now they were using? Their face blurred in front of you as you slammed the door on them. They called your name desperately through the door, but you were already running down the hallway, down the stairs, down the street. _Away._

         The marks on their arm were perfectly placed to be a vampire bite. They had told you they were helping a feed a friend. You had believed them. You had been jealous. You laughed bitterly at the thought as the tears continued to run down your face and your feet continued to pound against the sidewalk. You wanted to put distance between you and Taylor. Taylor had _lied_ to you.

         By the time you stopped to collect your bearings, you were outside of his apartment. You were clean and you were going to stay clean. As much as you loved Taylor, they were no longer good for you. But _he_ had told you that you could come back to him when you were clean. You loved him, too. With a trembling hand, you knocked on the door.

         Michael opened the door and was surprised to see you.

         "Taylor's using," you said between sniffles.

         "But you're still clean?"

         You nodded and were admitted into the house.

 

         Taylor picked up the broken syringe from where they had dropped it when you walked in. They took a deep breath before dropping to their knees before the wet spot on the carpet that had been their wolfsbane mixture for the full moon. _This is my punishment_ , they thought sourly. _I should have been honest._

         Your name escaped Taylor's lips in their transformation. They had been afraid that you would leave if you knew the truth. So Taylor lied, said they were an addict, too. Said they were helping feed a friend. The idea that anyone would actually take werewolf blood was comical.

         You were the first person to smile at Taylor, and they had fallen in love with you for it. They had nursed you through all of the cold sweats, and shakes, and nights bent over the toilet as your body went through withdrawals. And when you were finally clean, Taylor said they were clean, too. It had taken six months of sobriety for you to even question the carefully placed needle marks that kept them human.

         The wolf took over, and Taylor didn't even try to fight her. It took all of their strength to stave her off, and Taylor was heartbroken this time. They embraced the wolf and gave her full control, before turning inward to try and push away the pain. How long before you called or texted and said it was over? How much longer could they call you their world? Maybe drugs _were_ the answer. Drugs would dull this pain they felt, because they knew you'd run back to him. They always knew you would eventually.

         You craved normal more than you craved drugs, and Taylor didn't fit normal. Taylor loved you unconditionally, and knew that you loved them, too. But Michael was normal. He was human. He fit the stereotypes your parents had raised you in. Taylor never had.

 

         "Taylor loves you. Why would he use?" Michael asked.

         "They," you corrected automatically. You stared into the steaming cup of tea that Michael had poured for you.

         Michael huffed to signal his irritation. "Why would _they_ use?" He emphasized the pronoun with an exaggerated eye roll.

         "I don't know." Fresh tears welled up in your eyes.

         "Have you talked with any of their friends?"

         You shook your head. Taylor didn't have friends. They were a solitary person.

         A howl outside the window caused you both to jump.

         "Just a werewolf," Michael said casually as he looked out at the street below.

         You looked out at the sky to the full moon. "You would think it would have gone into the woods before changing if it didn't have any wolfsbane," you replied conversationally.

         Michael's attention returned to you. He shrugged and sat down next to you on the couch. "If it's a junkie, it probably didn't even know there was a full moon tonight."

         The howling intensified, as if it were getting closer. You looked past Michael at the window. He tried to get your attention by putting a hand on your thigh. He said your name in a low voice and slid his hand up your leg. When you met his eyes, you realized coming had been a mistake.

         "I know you're upset about Taylor, but I can take you mind off of him if you want." His hand continued to inch up your leg slowly, as if he didn't want to spook you by moving too fast.

         "Them," you said firmly before standing. You walked over to the window to look out of the window at the street below. The werewolf was gone.

         Michael followed you to the window and put his hands on your shoulders. "Forget about them. Don't go back to being a junkie. I can fix all of your problems." He gave your shoulders a reassuring squeeze that made your gut clench. Michael had said that before: _"I can fix all of your problems."_ It had not ended well for you the last time. You remembered the bruises and the insults that he promised were because you were using. Things would get better once you were clean.

         You shook off his hands and took a step towards the door. "I'm gonna get going."

         "You should stay here."

         "I should go check on Taylor."

         Michael said your name. A couple of years ago, it would have made you pause. You would have melted into his arms and done whatever he wanted.

         You shook your head to keep your body from doing just that.

         Michael's brows pulled together and he pursed his lips as he looked at you.

         "What did you come here for?"

         "I…" Why had you come? You were the worst partner in the world. You should be with Taylor, trying to stop them from using, not standing in your ex-boyfriend's living room. You had been scared of using again. You hadn't been strong enough to resist alone.

         "You…?" Michael asked, crossing his arms.

         "I have to go."

         You ran back to Taylor as fast as you could. Your heart beat furiously in your chest as you cursed yourself. They could have overdosed because you ran out. They could be out buying more as you ran to their apartment. The door hung wide, scratches gouged deep into the wood and the door handle crunched between a pair of strong jaws. You ran into the apartment, screaming their name, but Taylor was nowhere to be found. You didn't know what to do; Taylor's phone was charging by their bed and their wallet and keys were in the bowl by the front door.

         They were a werewolf. You were so stupid. They hadn't been using, they had been taking their wolfsbane. They were out running around the city because you'd been jumped to conclusions.

         Helpless, you crawled into their bed and clutched a pillow to your chest. It smelled like Taylor. You cried yourself to sleep, hoping beyond a hope that they would come home. You would apologize for running away. You would help them through the full moons. And you would beg forgiveness that they had to hide this from you. You just hoped that they would accept your apologies and take you back.


	2. Paperback

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Selkies are a personal favorite of mine. :3

**_Prompt #2:_ ** _Pick you up like a paperback, with the track record of a maniac._

 

"Have you read this?" Cathy asked, handing you a paperback book.

The book was tattered. The corners of the orange cover were missing and had left soft, frayed edges behind. A photograph of the sun setting over the ocean, turning the gray water and white clouds shades of red, pink, orange, and yellow, was the background. In the foreground was the black silhouette of a woman sitting at the edge of the water, holding a large shape that could have been a blanket or seal pelt across her lap. Her profile was backlit by the sun, obscuring the finer details of her face, but a single white line ran down her cheek. You couldn't tell if the white line was simply an old crease where the plastic coating had cracked to reveal the white paper below or if it was a stream of tears running down the girl's cheek. The title, written in a black, cursive-style font read: _Painfully Human_. In small white font against the girl's black silhouette, the words 'a person' replaced the author's name.

You opened the cover to the title page. The corners of the yellowed pages were curled forward as if for an embrace and the title page seemed to ask you to continue reading. You turned the page slowly, afraid that the tattered old book would crumble to dust in your hands if not handled with the utmost care. On the dedication page were the printed words: _for a person_. Under this was a personal dedication written in bright orange ink.

_To You. Come back to me._

You stared at the words. They had reminded you of something. Even though you had never read this book before, you felt as though this orange message was for you and only you. You ran a finger over the words, feeling the indentations in the page that formed the strokes, letters, words, and message.

When Cathy said your name, you looked up at her. She was so pretty when she smiled. Now, she wasn't smiling. Her black eyebrows were pulled together so tightly they appeared to be a single eyebrow, and her brown eyes watched you. She seemed to be studying you as intently as you had been studying the book. Her perfect lips were pursed and her mouth angled down into a slight frown. You counted the pairs of lines on her top and bottom lips that lined up perfectly as you stalled. You didn't want to lie to Cathy about reading this book, and something in the pit of your stomach told you that saying you hadn't read the book was a lie.

You still didn't have an answer when there were no more pairs of lines in her lips, and so you returned your attention to the book. You slowly turned the pages until you were on the first chapter. You read the first page with painstaking attention to detail, reading every line, word, and character, trying with all of your might to determine whether this combination of words meant anything to you. If Cathy was asking, it was important.

Nothing about that first page held anything familiar to you. You closed the book and turned it over. Unlike the front cover, the back was black with a couple of lines of white lettering. There were no pictures behind the words, and no reviews of praise from critics above or below the block of text. Just the short summary and the barcode. You read the summary, hoping that it would jog your memory.

_When a selkie's pelt is stolen, it's up to her girlfriend to find the culprit. But as the days pass, the selkie slowly begins to slip into madness. With no leads of the thief or the location of the pelt, she must decide whether to stay with the selkie or leave for a new life. As a human, she doesn't understand the gravity of the situation. Will her love prevail over the encroaching madness? Or will she give up and move on?_

Deep down, you felt as though you knew this story, but you still didn't know if you'd read the book. It didn't look familiar to you. Cathy's intense gaze felt like it was boring holes into your forehead as you stared at the back cover. You counted the lines in the barcode. And then you counted how many different thicknesses of bars there were. And then you counted how many bars were of each thickness, all the while stalling against Cathy's stare. You wanted to give her the answer she wanted to hear.

"I don't think I have," you said after counting all of the characters in the summary, first without spaces or punctuation, then without spaces, then including spaces.

Cathy sighed and stood up.

You panicked. Cathy never had a visit this short. You had to keep her here, you weren't ready for her to leave.

"Is it a good book?" you asked.

"You should read it." Cathy picked up her purse and slung it over one shoulder. It was a purse that you had gotten her many years ago. The faux leather was beginning to crack, revealing white below the burgundy exterior. The straps had many lines of stitching from repairs over the years. It was the last Christmas present that you had given to her before everything changed.

"Are you leaving?" you asked, moving your gaze from the old purse to catch her eye.

"I am. I'll be back tomorrow, okay?" She bent down and kissed you softly on the lips before leaving the room. The heavy metal door swung shut behind her. You heard the lock grind shut from the outside as the metal mechanisms scraped against one another. Cathy's face appeared briefly behind the diamond mesh encased in glass that made up your only window, and then she was gone. When she left, so did your humanity. She was the only thing still grounding you in this world. You screamed and threw the book at the door before dropping to all fours and crawling in circles on the floor. There had to be a way out on one of the walls. If you just kept circling, kept looking, you would find it. And then you could go back to your life with Cathy. You had to find it. If you just kept circling, it would show up eventually.

 

Cathy clenched her skirt in her hands when you began screaming. As she walked away from your room escorted by a guard, she had to try to block you out. You always screamed and threw the book at the door when she left. Your mind only seemed present when she sat across from you. And even then, you weren't who you used to be. The guard put a comforting hand on her shoulder and squeezed lightly. He was trying to convey his sympathies, Cathy supposed, but it wouldn't work. Your craziness wasn't your fault; it hadn't been bad genetics or drugs. It had been someone else. Someone had taken a piece of your soul and run away with it.

"How was she today?" the receptionist asked conversationally when Cathy returned her visitor's badge.

"Same as always."

"Have there been any leads on her pelt?"

Cathy shook her head.

"That's a shame."

"The selkie leaders aren't convinced that she'll return to normal anymore. It's been too long."

"Are you giving up on her?"

Cathy shrugged. She asked herself that question every day. Did she give up on you? Did she move on with her life and leave you to rot in here? Or did she keep trying to break through the madness? It had never been done before, but she'd told herself that there was a first time for everything over the last ten years.

"The book will be waiting at the counter for you tomorrow, just like every day."

Biting her lip, Cathy glanced back down the hallway towards your room, where she could still hear your faint screams. "Leave the book in her room this time." Cathy walked away from the counter towards the exit, gripping the strap of her purse to the point that her knuckles were white.

"Will we be seeing you tomorrow?" the receptionist called after Cathy.

The sliding glass doors shut behind Cathy without a response. As if you knew that she had left the building, the screams coming from your room stopped.

"Do you think she'll be back?" the receptionist asked the guard.

"It's been ten years," was all he said in response.


	3. Stolen

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one was heartbreaking to write. :'(

**_Prompt #3:_ ** _We need to fetch back the time they have stolen from us._

 

         Ever since the Ayakashi Scare in California, Ryu had been in hiding. He refused to let you come with him. You were human was his reasoning. He didn’t want you to sacrifice everything for him. Ryu promised to come back as soon as the ayakashi hunting died down in your area. In the meantime, he wanted you to make sure that you continued to live your life. That way, when he came back, only one of you had to start over from scratch. He asked you to lie about dating him so that the hunters would leave you alone. If they thought that Ryu might try to visit you, you would have absolutely no time to yourself.

         While Ryu had asked you to continue to live an inconspicuous life, he hadn’t expressly said that you couldn’t get involved with the politics of the matter. In a matter of weeks, you climbed the ranks in the pro-ayakashi campaign until you were one of the leaders. You spoke out against all of the hunting that was going on. You recruited others to join the protests. You fought however you could to ensure that Ryu could come home as soon as possible. You fought to ensure that children could return to their parents and couples could be reunited. Fair had nothing to do with it for you. Life wasn’t fair, and you knew that. It wasn’t about what was fair, it was about what was right and what was wrong. Hunting ayakashi was wrong. Separating mixed families and couples was wrong. Allowing people and ayakashi and all other fae to live their lives however they wanted was right. That was what you were fighting for.

         Your face began to show up regularly on the news. You gave statements, made speeches, debated with ‘purists’ about the definition of the word person, but you always respected Ryu’s wishes. You never told anyone that you had a boyfriend, let alone that he was a baku, and you never attended any event that conflicted with work. You did your best to balance your newfound passion with the rest of your life, and you always knew no matter how terrible your day was, sleep was always at the end.

         Ryu couldn’t visit you physically for fear of getting caught, but he spent many hours in your dreams every night. When he didn’t need to eat, he spent the entire night with you. When he did need to eat, you tried your damnedest to turn your dreams into nightmares. This always made him laugh, because it never worked. Any space that contained Ryu could never be a nightmare for you, not really. You hadn’t had a proper nightmare since you began dating him a couple of years ago.

         One night, after a particularly draining day at work, Ryu didn’t come to you. You wandered your dream, which was the park you frequented as a child, looking for him. You called out his name, but there was no response. You were alone in the park. And for the first time since meeting Ryu, you woke up the next morning more tired than when you fell asleep. Your blankets and pillows were spread around your bed in weird positions ranging from under your lower back to wedged between the foot of the bed and your footboard to on the ground against the far wall of your bedroom. Your blankets were tangled around your legs and body, making it difficult to get out of bed.

         You went to your phone, charging in the kitchen, in hopes that maybe Ryu had called or texted you in the night to tell you he couldn’t meet up last night. There were notifications for social media and emails, but no messages from Ryu. Breathing began to take more effort. You had to force the air out of your lungs before you could take another breath. Your fingers began to tingle as they dropped a couple of degrees in temperature. You continued to worry that something had happened to Ryu. You could feel your heart beat in the pulse below your jaw and your mouth was beginning to dry out.

         Even though you had promised him that you wouldn’t call him, you couldn’t help it. If he was gone, everything you’d been fighting so hard for would mean nothing for you. It would have all been pointless in your life. The phone rang for what felt like hours before someone picked it up.

         The voice on the other line wasn’t Ryu’s. It was a woman’s. You demanded to know why she had answered Ryu’s phone, but the woman simply chuckled. She told you that you had the wrong number. That the number you had called belonged to the community and that Ryu had left them six months ago and never come back. She asked if you were his girlfriend and if you had seen him. They needed him to come back to keep the children’s nightmares at bay. Nobody in the compound had slept through the night in weeks.

         When you told her that you hadn’t seen him in the physical world since the hunts began, the woman told you that he had left to try and get food. Bakus had the easiest time blending in with humans, but she guessed that he had been caught. She told you the city that he had been planning on visiting and then hung up the phone.

         How could he be missing? He’d been visiting you all this time. The first night that he missed had been last night.

         You were packing a bag to drive out to the town Ryu was supposed to visit when you got the phone call from your assistant. There had been another trophy display set up by ayakashi hunters. This one was in your city, and the hunters were calling you out by name. You needed to get to City Hall ASAP. He told you to dress professionally and be ready for a round of interviews. He’d already called your work and gotten you the day off, and he was going to send a car to get you as soon as you got off the phone.

         Ryu had to wait. You hated to decide that, but if you refused to answer these hunters and the media, bad things could happen. You prepared yourself to face the outside world.

         The car took you straight into the frenzy of reporters and bystanders. The chainlink fence panels of trophy displays were the first thing you saw, along with the outlines of seven ayakashi. The bodies varied in age, gender, and species, but all were dead and zip-tied to the fence panels by neck, wrists, and ankles. The tengu body took up two panels, and her wings were also zip-tied to the chainlink. There were also a couple of kitsunes, an okami, a kappa, an oni, and a bloody body that had taken quite the beating.

         You gave your statement to the media as soon as you got out of the car, before moving to get a closer look at the bodies. The hunters claimed these were vermin from this city, so you felt the need to see if you recognized any of them. With disgust, you noted that the hunting party was completely comprised of fae: an elf, a dwarf, and a brownie. Even fae were ganging up on fae. You continued to move down the line of bodies. Once more members of your group got there, you would cut them down, clean them up, and have ceremonies according to their respective traditions. Until then, if you even tried to approach the bodies, the hunters would probably attack you.

         The kitsunes were both children, probably no older than ten. Their throats were cut, and one of them was missing an ear. You couldn’t believe the barbarity that your world was still facing. Humans seemed to need someone to hate in order to function, but in this modern age, you didn’t understand how the hatred could be so much more violent than unsolicited insults.

         One news network was interviewing one of the hunters, who was describing how they had killed each of their trophies. Where were the police? Why hadn’t these men been arrested yet? The hunter began describing how the last body had been killed just last night, after being hunted for six months. The bloody bastard almost slipped past them, had almost disappeared into a crowd because bakus looked too much like humans. They were the most dangerous of the ayakashi. Your eyes moved to the beaten, bloody body at the end of the display.

         Your feet stopped moving. Somebody had tied concrete blocks to your ankles and stuffed cotton into your ears. Your vision blurred and your throat began to hurt. Somebody else must have been pulling on your knees because you collapsed to the ground. The pain that lanced up your forearms didn’t even register as your hands hit the ground.

         You didn’t believe what you were seeing. You were wrong. The hunters hadn’t. They couldn’t have.

         Your assistant pulled you from the ground. He asked you to stop screaming. He put you in the car you had come in. He took your hands and cleaned them and bandaged them. He begged you to stop screaming. He begged you to open your eyes. He begged you to talk to him.

         That night, Ryu came to you. But it wasn’t a usual dream. You woke up screaming. The next morning, you had a new mission. You quit your job. You devoted yourself fully to your cause. This was personal. They had stolen from you.


End file.
